Inexplicata-The Journal of Hispanic Ufology

This is the journal of the Institute of Hispanic Ufology (IHU), presenting UFO and paranormal cases from Spain, South America and the Caribbean

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Giants in the Americas

Giants in the Americas: Yesterday and TodayBy Scott Corrales

Alexander Mackenzie and Simon Fraser, the first explorers to venture into the pathless northwestern areas of Canada, were cautioned by the native tribes he encountered that hideous, destructive creatures prowled the region: the tall peaks of British Columbia were home to eight-foot tall Sasquatches, the broad river to which Mackenzie would give his name was the lair of the "Brush Man of the Loucheaux", a yellow-eyed monster who, like Beowulf's Grendel, feasted on human flesh, showing preference for tender helpings of women and children. The rocky barrens held even greater terrors, such as the dreaded Weetigo, a fanged giant. Even scarier were the towering headhunters of the Nahanni Valley, and the invisible creatures said to haunt the shores of the Great Slave Lake. While primitive peoples are fond of creating all manner of monsters to occupy regions beyond their immediate scope of action, could it be that the Slavey and Dogrib tribes of the region may have actually based their tales on fact? These tribes also expressed a fear of the bleak stone barrens that separated them from Inuit territory, since it was the haunt of other giants, aside from the aforementioned Weetigo.

At this point it becomes necessary to pause and wonder why, if these giants were so numerous, no remains have ever been found? Even Fortean researchers have turned up their noses at the well-worn stories of giant bones found here and there throughout the Americas.

Reports of large, hairy hominids--true giants, in some cases, exceeding the height of most Sasquatch or Bigfoot reports--are common in the desolate areas of the north. Cryptozoologist Ivan T. Sanderson noted that these cases stretched from Alaska to Labrador and even Greenland, and citing the work of other scholars, suggested that many of these Pre-Amerindians may have occupied the wastelands prior to the arrival of the forebears of the Inuit, whose tradition speak extensively about them. These creatures are described as hirsute, violent savages living in encampments built of large boulders and whalebones (it is worth noting at this point that this description coincides with the one given two thousand years ago by the Macedonian admiral Nearchus regarding the appearance and dwellings of giant savages along the shores of the Persian Gulf). Writing at length on the subject in his book Things (Pyramid, 1967), Sanderson notes that the Inuit name for these creatures is "Toonijuk", adding that this is but one of many names given to them (Tornit and Tuunik being others) and that according to native belief, they dwell in remote, unapproachable valleys, from which they seldom emerge. But more on these later.

Could there be a connection between these nightmare creatures and the "devil-head" petroglyphs found in the area? Fred Bruemmer's article "The Petroglyphs of Hudson Strait" (The Beaver, Summer 1973) mentions that the cliffs of Qikertaaluk Island and its surroundings depict horned faces possibly drawn by Inuit shamans as recently as 500 years ago. In 1970, according to Bruemmer, excavations at Bylot Island's Button Point turned up two large masks carved from driftwood and painted with ochre: one of the pair showed a visage of "nearly demonic power and fierceness" which resembled the petroglyphs.

It is also worth noting that UFO researcher and author John Robert Colombo mentions in his UFOs over Canada (Hounslow, 1991), that some of the earliest examples of cave art to be found in Canada could, according some theorists, represent primitive depictions of non-human visitation. These include the "Flying Object" petroglyph from Christina, British Columbia, and the "Rabbit Man" from Ontario's Bon Echo Provincial Park.

Author George Eberhard wrote about the traditions held by the Inuit of the Northwest Territories regarding non-human presences in the area. While these traditions are invariably folkloric in nature, filled with ancestral spirits and religious motifs, there is the possibility that they describe factual events. The Inuit on Sledge Island, for example, have a tradition which describes the arrival of a fireball which appeared out of nowhere to the distress of the tribespeople, but even more distressing was the appearance, in the wake of the heavenly phenomenon, of an entity resembling "a human skeleton" which appeared in the Inuit village and began slaying its inhabitants. Native Greenlanders also have unusual beliefs, such as the existence of a subterranean (interdimensional?) realm that is home to the iserak, a dwarfish race that appears and disappears into the ground. These non-humans have what appears to be a technology more advanced than that of the Inuit, but also employ traditional means (bows and arrows, spears) to hunt arctic game. Graves containing four-foot tall beings were allegedly unearthed in 1632 by the British explorer Foxe: the bodies, which appeared to be mature adults, were surrounded by bows, arrows and stone spears. An iserak cemetery?

Do Not Enter The Valley

Located in the southwestern corner of Canada's endless Northwest Territories, pegged between the Selwyn and Mackenzie Mountains, lies the Nahanni Valley, named after the river that courses through it. The Nahanni's southern course is best known for its spectacular cataracts--Virginia Falls--and the spectacular natural scenery of the area, which nowadays is a favorite recreation spot for experienced canoers and kayakers with an urge to brave the river.

Yet the Nahanni Valley acquired the reputation of being an evil place, or at the very least an enchanted one, at the dawn of the 20th century. Driven by the Klondike gold fever at the end of the 19th century, prospectors pushed deeper into Canada's pathless wilderness in the hopes of finding the soft yellow metal that would make them rich. Some of these enterprising but poorly equipped miners were never heard from again, fueling all manner of wild rumors and speculation: that the Nahanni's deep gulleys and valleys housed a warm-weather paradise zealously guarded by hostile natives and presided over by a "White Queen", in the best tradition of H.Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Prehistoric monsters and haunting winds completed the ensemble, substantiated by the fact that regional native art often included drawings of mastodons and similar beasts. An active imagination could certainly fill the considerable number of caves found in the area's limestone canyons with unspeakable creatures, but what was the truth behind the riddle?

In 1898, Jack Stanier and Joe Baird, two prospectors who'd broken away from the pack of Klondike hopefuls, managed to secure the services of a native guide who led them through the maze of minor canyons around Virginia Falls directly to the headwaters of the South Nahanni. They would have entered the enigmatic valley, but their guide experienced a "nightmare" and balked at leading the two men any further. In 1905, William and Frank McLeod entered the valley and came back with a bottle filled with gold nuggets. They returned for more, this time accompanied by an engineer, and were never heard from again until a rescue mission in 1908 found their headless skeletons tied to trees. From that moment on, the Nahanni acquired its popular moniker, "Headless Valley".

The dark legend grew when another disappearance took place in 1910: Martin Jorgenson, a Norwegian gold seeker, built a cabin on the banks of the Nahanni as a base from which to launch his activities. Although a letter indicated that his quest had been successful, Jorgenson would not live to enjoy his newfound wealth. His bones were found twoscore yards away from the ruins of his cabin, with the curious detail that a "loaded and cocked gun" had also been found, as though the prospector had decided to make a stand against unknown quantities. His skull, however, was never accounted for.

In the pages of The Mysterious North (Knopf, 1956) newspaperman Pierre Berton visited the Nahanni at the request of the Vancouver Sun and managed to interview Wille McLeod, a nephew of the long-vanished prospector, in 1947. The second McLeod stated that Indians no longer lived in the valley and went at great lengths to avoid it, entering it only in groups. Another prospector, Bill King, informed Berton that he had been to the valley in 1934, when an Indian guide known as Big Charlie offered to act as his guide. But the guide was invaded by a sudden trepidation that caused him to abruptly terminate the journey. "We'd done maybe one hundred seventy miles when he turned back," said King. "Frightened, I guess, though I don't know what of. I had to go back with him, of course."

Sudden trepidation, or a vision of imminent danger, like the one picked up by Stanier and Baird's guide thirty-five years earlier?

Perhaps it would be more important to ask if there are really tribes of unspeakably awful beheaders lurking in this natural wonderland: cryptozoologist Loren Coleman's The Field Guide To Bigfoot, Yeti and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide (Avon, 200) offers a 1964 case in which trapper John Baptist from the Fort Liard settlement encountered an unclothed hominid described as "strong-looking and sporting a long dark beard". Sightings of a similar being were reported at Fort Simpson on the Mackenzie River months later. Known as nuk-luk or Bushmen, these primitive creatures may be responsible for the Nahanni's sinister reputation.

Monsters of the Torngat Range

When writing about the enigmatic Toonijuk in Spring on an Arctic Island (Little, Brown, 1956) researcher Katherine Scherman, who had gone north of the Artic Circle for over a month on a scientific expedition, organized by ornithologist Rosario Mazzeo, provides fascinating details. Although evidence for pre-Inuit occupation of this northernmost region of the Americas goes back to 10,000-7,000 and is known to anthropologists as the Paleo-Arctic tradition. The physical evidence consists largely of stone artifacts--microblades and small bifaces--found at locations ranging from Alaska to Baffin Island, where they correspond to the pre-Dorset Culture peoples who were pushed out of northern Canada and Greenland by new arrivals.

"The Toonijuk," writes Scherman, "were not Eskimos and no one is sure of who they were or what was their final fate. They are said by the Eskimos to have been very large, and possessed of some queer and disgusting habits." These habits included a preference for rotten meat and the wearing of uncured animal hides. Scherman visited Bylot Island, a small landmass located across the water from the Inuit settlement at Pond Inlet on Baffin Island, which according to her hosts, held remnants of a Toonijuk campsite or settlement. The researcher was startled by the depth to which the stones had been driven into the permafrost, suggesting either prodigious strength or tools more advanced than stone and reindeer bones. Inuit tradition held that the vanished race of degenerate giants could lift stones that no Inuit could even dream of picking up. Whale ribs and jawbones were also in evidence. Scherman's attention was drawn to a cairn that contained oversized human bones, which could have been Toonijuk. No effort was made to investigate the site, given that the expedition did not include personnel trained to evaluate the remains--an impassioned plea made by the author herself. "The Toonijuk," she concludes, "are shadowy figures in the half memory of another primitive race which has no writing and no history."

Today, Bylot Island is a bird sanctuary administered by Parks Canada, the Canadian national park service, and the Toonijuk campsite is part of the Sirmilik National Park, established in 1992. Whether or not the cairn with the bones was ever discovered is anyone's guess: in 1961, French anthropologist B.S. d'Anglure set out to find an Inuit necropolis discovered by meteorologist F.F. Payne in the mid-1880's, but so numerous were the graves and monuments that he was unable to locate the precise one.

Author Rufus Drake approached the subject of these Arctic manimals in his article on UFO activity over Greenland, which appeared in the October 1977 issue of Saga UFO Report. Citing the experiences of Danish military men stationed at the Thule Air Base (part of the Distant Early Warning radar system), Drake reported that pilots with the 727th squadron of the Danish Air Force had often had UFO encounters in those cold latitudes. One sergeant made the curious observation that conditions above freezing and with strong wind, which sent shards of frozen moisture into the frigid air, were propitious for seeing "strange monsters, the local equivalent of the abominable snowman." In connection to the UFO situation, Danish aviators reported the sensation of being watched or monitored by non-human presences, to the extent that some men reportedly heard voices in their heads speaking in foreign languages.

Drake goes on to mention that "abominable snowman"-type presences have been reported in Greenland since the 1930's, and that in 1974 scientist Turgo Sondheim had the courage to suggest that these humanoid figures, and the unexplained craft seen by Royal Danish Air Force's fighter pilots, hailed from a hidden civilization in an unexplored part of Greenland. The scientist claimed having uncovered archeological remains that bolstered his conclusions, but nothing more was ever said. No traces of the "big fighting people" have been found.

“Gigantes” of the Southlands

Trudging through fields of maguey and scrub vegetation toward the pyramid complex of Teotihuacán is the closest that the casual tourist can come to being on another planet. Even on a fine sunny day, there is certain alienness to the landscape that makes the enormous pyramids of the Sun and Moon seem a trifle frightening. On a cloudy day, the entire region and its surrounding mountains appear to have been designed according to the descriptions of the terrifying otherworldly realms imagined by H.P. Lovecraft.

Thousands of tourists visit Teotihuacán every year; tens of thousands of postcards and books depicting the complex are sold throughout the country and overseas, but we still do not know who built the stone metropolis. The Aztecs treated the site with awe and reverence, naming it "the city of the gods" when they could not imagine who else but gods could have built such a place. Superstition kept the Aztecs from ever occupying Teotihuacán, and when the conquering Spaniards first reached the location, dense layers of alluvial mud covered it. Historians tell us that the monumental complex was built around 200 A.D. and was sacked by the Toltecs in 856 A.D.There is evidence that the Mexican pyramids are far older than the ultraconservative figures given by scholars. According to British archaeologist H.S. Bellamy, the excavations at Teotihuacán required the removal of layers of earth measuring up to one meter in thickness. Bellamy himself reckoned the pyramid to have been built around 5000 B.C..

The question of Teotihuacán's origin was solved in ancient tradition by the presence of deities (visitors from space?) and the ubiquitous giants that have appeared in every single cultural tradition in the world. Fernando de Alba Ixtilxochitl, a chronicler from colonial times, manifested in his writings that "there were giants in New Spain (Mexico). Furthermore, their bones may be found everywhere, and ancient Toltec historians have dubbed them Quinametzin, against whom they fought many wars and had much strife in this land called New Spain..."

It may well be that the bones of these giants corresponded to those of mastodons and other early mammals, but the description of these clearly nonhuman creatures abound in the ancient records. Fray Andrés de Olmos, quoting from native sources, stresses the "divine" origin of these giants: "The four gods created the giants, who were very large men, endowed with enough strength to uproot trees with their hands...the Indians have outstanding recollections of them and call them quinametzin huetlacame, which is to say, large and deformed men." The colonial chronicler adds the curious detail that the giants were afraid of falling down, since they found it impossible to stand up again (due to Earth's gravity?). Tradition has it that it was these giants, the Quinametzin, who were put to work at building Teotihuacán for unknown purposes. Nahuatl codexes go as far as to mention a king among the giants, Tlatlotl, "who built great things and was taken for a god." Another chronicle describes how Xelhua, another giant, built an artificial column "in the shape of a pyramid". Curiously enough, the Codex Vaticanus 3738 depicts one of these giants.

In the mid-1930's, General Langlois, a French researcher, looked into the evidence of a strange unknown civilization predating the arrival of the Olmecs and the Toltecs on the Mesoamerican scene. This enigmatic culture was one of formidable mathematicians and engineers who may have been imitating older monuments still. The memory of their existence and the magnitude of their undertakings may have led successive cultures to regard them as giants who were swept away by floods, earthquakes and other disasters. Langlois believed that certain Egyptian pyramids were copies of the earlier Mexican ones.

The presence of giants in contemporary ufology, particularly in Latin American cases, cannot be overlooked in this regard: creatures measuring up to twelve feet in height have been reported in Brazilian and Argentinean encounters. Could these be the otherworldly kinsmen of the giants who built the mighty Mexican monuments?

French author and occultist Michel Cargese has explored this aspect of the giants as master builders in his own works. He provides the example of a prehistoric tool kit found in Agadir, Morocco: the 300,000 year old set of tools was designed to be used by someone with hands corresponding to those of a 16-foot tall giant. He adds that other cyclopean works found in other parts of the globe have also been the handiwork of these giants.

Lest the reader dismiss all this talk of giants as the same old hearsay that permeates most cryptoarchaelogical articles, it is perhaps worth noting here that the remains of physical giants continue being found in contemporary times. In 1975, Mexico's premier ufologist, Pedro Ferriz, visited the town of Calvillo, Aguascalientes (on the Pacific coast, famous for its intricate mazes of unexplored manmade caves) to inspect some ancient petroglyphs on the property of Víctor Martínez, a local landowner. Martínez told the ufologist that he was ambivalent about the petroglyphs, which he considered unlucky, particularly since "that affair with the giants". When asked to elaborate on what he meant, Martínez explained that he had stumbled upon the ancient skeletons of two extraordinarily large men while tilling the soil. Martínez went into Calvillo to notify the authorities about his find, only to discover that the local police believed him to have killed both giants and wanted to incarcerate him! The farmer finessed his way out of the predicament, returned to his farm, and set fire to the bones.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Argentina: More Animal Mutilations

Source: CEUFO (La Pampa, Argentina)Date: 07.28.11

Argentina: Mysterious Mutilations ContinueBy Quique Mario, CEUFO

Animal mutilations remind us of the strange events that rocked the province nearly ten years ago. Pratt, 51, owns a locker manufacturing facility in Alta Italia. He told the El Diario newspaper that “animals mutilated in a similar fashion” were found on his fields just like they did back then.

At the time, the phenomenon was ascribed to extraterrestrial beings and served to nurture peasant superstitions like the “Chupacabras”. SENASA advised at the time that mutilations in over a hundred of these cases could be blamed on the “red-muzzled mouse”. However, this species does not exist in the region and the mystery was never explained.

Pratt did not make his discovery widely known; some friends discouraged him because “they say that these are just fantasies that people make up.” However, the story became known and Alta Italia’s FM radio station broadcasted it this Wednesday morning.

German Schreiber, the officer-in-charge of the Sheriff’s office, traveled on Wednesday noon to the “El Iman” ranch, belonging to the Pratt family. It is located 13 kilometers from town, and he was accompanied by the town’s veterinarian.

“He was unable to determine the cause of death. It’s just like the cases that occurred at that time,” noted the policeman.

In an interview with El Diario, Pratt says that his foreman found two Aberdeen Angus calves, each weighing 350 kilograms, mutilated in a very strange way and without any traces of blood around them. All this in a 60 hectare spread.

“One was missing its scalp completely, all the way from the muzzle to the left. The bone has been peeled away at the carretilla, and the tongue is missing along with skin from its throat. There isn’t a single drop of blood anywhere; the incision of the skin is perfect, as if done with a razor,” he says, astonished.

The other animal is missing its upper teeth. It’s upper lip is burned to a dark blue, and half of its tongue is missing. No other signs are visible.”

The discovery stupefied the employee who came across the animals as he toured the property, and even Pratt himself. “The man has been working in the field for forty years and is used to seeing dead animals, yet he never saw anything like it. I’ve also seen many dead animals, but never under these circumstances,” he added.

“Carrion animals aren’t involved. No way. It isn’t a puma, or a wild boar, or even a carancho,” he noted.

Aside from the dead animals, two gates along the ranch fences were found with their chains broken, and the ox cart was disconnected.

Pratt did not inform the police, nor did he make the case known to any other agency, since he is well aware of the reply offered by SENASA at the time. “They determined that it was either a mouse or a carancho (vulture). I know that. But if you ask me, I’ll say no. This is something that I’ve never seen, something that really attracts attention.”

Along with his son Mauricio, 18, he took photos of the animals, which were left on the field in a state of decomposition.

Pratt is 51 and he is known in town as “an earnest man.” “I know the subject. I was raised in the countryside. I’m not crazy. I’m normal, like any other local,” he jokes, as he recreates the circumstances of time and space in which the surprising animal mutilation occurred. “The kid who surveys the fields left at one o’clock and returned the next day at noon. [The mutilation] must have occurred during the course of that afternoon, night and the morning of the next day. We found no signs or traces that suggested that the death had been brought about by a bullet or something. We don’t know what killed them.”

“The incision is perfect. Completely so. It’s very strange. That’s my definition. I can’t say what it is, but it’s no carrion eater, vulture or puma,” he adds.

The field where the animals appeared is not close to any rural road or route. “I know about livestock, and I’ve seen many dead animals, but never anything like this,” he insists. “I would like to have someone study this so that the matter can be cleared up someday. At the time they blamed carrion animals, and that’s why no progress was ever made. I find that odd.”

“Did you feel fear when you found this?” asks the El Diario interviewer.

“No, bewilderment. The foreman’s been a cattleman for over 40 years. All the more so, it isn’t normal. He’s a man used to seeing all sorts of animals.”

Yet he admits having allowed paranormal phenomena enter his mind: “Some talk about flying saucers because they must be mentioned, if only to say something. The same goes with witches. I say I don’t believe in them, but they exist, they really do. How can I not believe? But I think its something else. Otherwise those weird things would turn un. I’m not saying that a flying saucer is going to come to my house, but this is weird. It’s surprising. It’s not lightning from a storm or anything customary. This is surprising.”

Monday, July 25, 2011

Transition: Juan G. Atienza (1930-2011)

The Spanish-speaking paranormal community has lost one of its leading lights: a scholar and filmmaker whose works inspired and enlightened several generations of seekers of the esoteric. Juan G. Atienza, whose works have been mentioned so often in my articles and in the pages of Inexplicata, died on June 16, 2011.

This was a giant tree that fell in the forest without making a sound. I would not have learned of his passing had it not been for Jesús Callejo’s heartfelt farewell message on his Facebook page. “One of the great thinkers that we’ve had in this country is gone,” writes Callejo, “and almost nobody has noticed. It is sad that it is so.”

Atienza’s work occupied a different swath of terrain from ufology. He was interested in the prehistoric mysteries he found everywhere in the Iberian peninsula: suggestions of sacred geometry, mysterious caves hinting at magical activity in the ancient world, strange cultures, the forbidden lore of the middle ages, the mystery of the Knights Templar and other religious military orders...none of these fields of knowledge was too arcane or “unpopular” for Atienza’s explorations. His La Gran Conciencia Cósmica --mentioned briefly in my article “Deeper Understanding” – raised the curtain, if only slightly, on the great game that non-human intelligences have been playing with humans since the beginning of time.

Callejo, who went from being a fan of his books to a close personal friend, remarks: “I always find it difficult to accept that persons of his stature should be unjustly forgotten, as if relegating these great researchers of history to their fates was a national custom,” observing in an earlier paragraph that Atienza “was aware of the loneliness and isolation that inevitably envelops you when your books are no longer listed on the publisher’s new arrivals.”

Argentina: The San Francisco Solano CE-3 (1965)

After many years of trying to contact him in vain through phone directories, thanks to the assistance of researcher Hector Antonio Picco, who kindly gave us a copy of his own interview, as well as the eyewitness’s address and phone number, we were able to contact Mr. Pereyra.

There are many sources to this case, but being so unusual, precisely on account of the all-too-human entities encountered, we decided that securing a personal interview was indispensable.

We were surprised at the certainty with which he told his story, remembering numerous details in spite of the time that had elapsed, giving us the impression that this event marked his life in a powerful way. He was changed by the event, although much more so by the journalistic coverage it received. He became a noontime TV show celebrity, sought by policemen and journalists eager to secure his testimony. We were welcomed at his home with great kindness and courtesy, and after sharing some mate, he began his story.

Interview Transcript – conducted by researchers Mariela Veronica de Tomaso and Miguel Angel Gomez Pombo, members of Proyecto CATENT, on 12 May 2001:

How old are you?

I’ll be 72. That’s why I’m telling you I can’t give you a specific year. I must’ve been thirty something when that happened.

I’m going to tell you [the story] as I saw it and according to what occurred. It was an ordinary and commonplace day. I was a milkman at the time, delivering bottled milk, and there was a place where trucks stopped at one place then another, and there were deliverymen. At a certain time, eight thirty more or less, I always did my job. At that time, the places I walked through or headed to, are now entirely populated. There’s been a complete change. For example, Donato Alvarez [road]. you got to that place, and you’d only find houses up there, then just a road, farms, the odd house with animals. I was coming from San Martin, which starts at Camino General Belgrano and then ends around Calzada [street] or beyond. I’m going along San Martín, I’m turning on Donato Alvarez, which is on this side of the tracks where there used to be a railroad. I’m driving calmly, like anyone driving with ease. Suddenly I saw something that moves this way...and it draws my attention, obviously. But I look at the landscape...and it fell, lost itself in the wilderness. There was some dense forest, very large, but it had a clearing. Well, it fell in the clearing, that thing. It was very, very cold. I grabbed a long coat, went to see what it was...but my notion that it fell from above, as though dropped by a parachute, didn’t work. I left the pickup truck, walked quickly, went under a bridge...wait...I went under a bridge, kept walking. That bridge went over a stream, and train passed overhead. Then I approached, I approached the device. We’re talking about a device now. I must’ve walked the equivalent of a city block and I realized that something wasn’t right. I kept walking, looked at the device, checked it out...but there was a guy inside, dressed, as though he was stuck inside a box. I was startled by the lights of the device, like a car’s dashboard, that is to say, green, yellow lights, all that...and I saw that the device was small, very small, much too small for its speed. Maybe this table was longer than the device (witness refers to a standard dining room table). I kept looking at it and didn’t touch it out of respect, because they might say I put my hands on it, or some such. I didn’t touch it because I was afraid or anything. I looked up and could see a fellow in the distance holding – what do you call them? – binoculars, spyglasses...so I headed toward him. That is to say, I went here, went there, looked this way and headed to where the man was looking toward the center of the forest, known as Monte de los Curas. It was very dense. Later squatters invaded it and they formed a community. I’m not sure if they were ever granted legal ownership or not....but it was very dense from the number of eucalyptus trees. It thought they were going to cut it down for its wood, but don’t know if they ever managed to. But as I approached, the guy either sees me or has something that tells him I’m coming...so the guy walks toward me. I see him. I’m not scared. I’m not excited. I feel nothing. Just like crossing paths with someone. What a strange guy, isn’t he? When he was nearly on top of me I had no choice but to say something, and I said good morning, how do you do? What’s up, boss? And he didn’t say a word. Frankly, he looked at me with a the-hell-do-you-want look and kept walking. I wasn’t too far from the guy, see, and I must’ve been like from here to that other path. I stood still and began to think: this is weird. He made a gesture with his hand, touched the upper part of the vehicle, a sort of dome opened up and he got in. Once inside, he kept looking around. It looked like it had floated up a little, but first there was a sound like an autogenous plant [...] and began to rise. It rose, closed its legs and took off. [...] So I stood there wondering, am I nuts? Seriously. That’s what I thought. Am I nuts? Am I dreaming, am I asleep? I became a bit physically uncontrolled. Touched my feet. It was a damp day, found a stream of water flowing nearby...realized I was okay. What happened is that something unexpected had occurred. So there I was on my way back, what the hell did I see? What was that? I looked one way and another, and saw two fellows walking along the train tracks. I asked: did you guys see anything? No, they said. I told them what had happened to me. I’m not sure if they paid much mind, and went on their way. Instead of heading toward Pasco to make deliveries, I was stunned by what I’d experienced. What was it? What could it be? Where am I? So I went back and left two crates of milk at a police station that used to be on San Martin and Donato Alvarez. I told the watchman that something strange had happened to me. What happened? he asked. So I told him I’d done this and that, and seen a strange machine on the ground, which landed this way, and I explained everything. Then it took off at a tremendous speed. I managed to see it and I explained it all to him.

Well, so that’s what I did. So where there used to be a butcher store, there was a warehouse before that, and one day two guys appeared three days later and started asking questions. They were newsmen from a paper in Wilde that wanted a scoop. From that moment onward, many researchers, journalists and even the police (the police took him to the Lanus station and asked him many questions. He also spoke to a psychiatrist). They told me I was a normal person.

At that time, Fabio Zerpa and his team also came over, and I even got a chance to have lunch with Mirtha Legrand. Much later on the came from the Ministry of the Navy – Captain Pagani – and they also interviewed me and kept me for some four or five hours. Later we went to John Kennedy University with Zerpa to give a presentation on UFOs. It was on one of these events that a foreign journalist asked me how many times had I been to the United States, since the device I was describing resembled something that NASA already had over there. I had said they were Russians, British, Americans...they couldn’t be from anywhere else. You see a guy, he’s dressed almost like you, except for those suits that looked like frogman suits, a guy who’s like you, except without the language to face each other and talk.

How tall were they?

Normal. Thin, elegant. One was walking and the other was stuck inside.

Did they have something on their heads?

No. The one walking had his head combed back, and something behind, a sort of hood that he’d removed, I don’t know. Don’t know. I saw it calmly, without any fear, emotion or anything like it. That’s very, very important.

You got to stand beside the object. You very nearly touched it?

I didn’t touch it for ethical reasons.

And there was another person inside. And that person didn’t look at you?

That person looked stuck in there. So the other one got in to the other space that was empty. They must’ve been seated back to back.

Was the object transparent?

The upper part had a dome at a certain height, I don’t know. It was steel colored, just to give you an idea.

What was its shape?

It was like a big egg. Like a Nandú egg. Apparently half of it went this way, and opened completely when the other guy got in. The transparent part.

How did you see the object descend?

Looked like something was falling down.

Was it shiny, dark?

Yes, it was shiny, but it looked like it was raining (sic), as if surrounded by a little bit of fog, but a form that had fallen there was clearly visible.

What color?

Just a regular bundle. I thought it was a parachute that had been cast away.

How was that thing braced on the ground?

With its little legs. Two little legs. The legs closed up when it rose into the air. Because it made an explosion here (sic) and rose to the height of the plants, more or less, at a speed that you couldn’t see it anymore, well, you could see it, but it looked like a long column of smoke. You can imagine the speed it had.

Did it create wind or something as it took off so quickly?

Not that I noticed, no. I’m telling you: it rose to a certain height, ran off, and when I saw it the horizon, it was already gone.

To what height did it rise slowly?

Up to treetop level.

What did it look like from underneath? Did it have a turbine or something to propel it?I couldn’t feel anything. Felt no noise and there was nothing to be seen underneath. I didn’t’ see anything out of the ordinary. That’s why you’ve got to be careful when making a report. That’s why the make you take tests.

Was there any mark left on the ground?

No.

You were very close. Could you hear any noise or sound?

No.

And the cabin with the dashboard, did it feel very modern to you?

And I thought it was going to start talking to me.

The man walked normally?

Yes.

What was his hair color?

Very blond.

Were both blond?

No, I didn’t see the other. You couldn’t see the one inside. You could tell there was a guy inside; you know he’s there because I saw him.

But you couldn’t see his head?

No, no. But I saw this one because he walked with the hood pulled back. He had a military field pouch on his legs and those thingies...the binoculars.

And regarding the dashboard...

I’m telling you, I owned an estanciera (rural vehicle similar to a Willys Jeep) and the dashboard wasn’t very technified.

What was it like?

It was a dashboard with yellow, green and red buttons inside. No steering wheel was visible.

Pereyra is a native of Elordi (a town in the province of Buenos Aires which, according to him, no longer exists, but was near General Villegas). He told us an anecdote about another sighting of a similar object that took place in his town, and also of his encounter with “la luz mala” (The Evil Light).

“We reached a field by a gate. I was 16 years old. The light moved and jumped from one side to another. It fell upon us, lighting everything up. We were scared...these were lights...

What color was it?White. If you’re scared of them, it gets worse. There are mysteries worthy of respect.

Did you associate this thing you saw with that light?

No, nothing to do with it at all.

Continuing with his story, and making reference to the various types of humanoids discussed in the UFO symposium held in Rosario, to which Fabio Zerpa was a guest, he said:

...It isn’t that, the fact is that there is someone who comes to look at us and our comings and goings, just like someone went to the Moon. But they’re terrestrial... what do you think?

Did you have the impression that they wre from here?

I’m convinced.

And what were they doing there?

Who knows? Looking at something, investigating something...

He also says that after this case, and without specifying a date, both his father and a neighbor saw some strange objects passing through the area.

Remarks

There isn’t much else to add to the lengthy and detailed report on the experience that befell this humble man. During our long chat, he repeated time and again that “the ones I saw are from here”. And they certainly appear to be so, judging by their physical appearance, although we understand that no one had such technology in the 1960s. If so, we would all be flying around in such devices, which seem to be a fine means of air transportation.

And if they are not from here, what could someone from beyond our world or culture be doing, wandering through a forest in the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Evidently, this is absurd, as is commonplace with hitherto unexplained phenomena.

The fact is that Pereyra saw them. Or at least he thought he saw them. Or better yet, something showed itself on that rainy morning, something that we don’t understand and perhaps conceals itself behind that display of supposedly quasi-terrestrial technology: too advanced for the times, but too human to be true reflection of some distant visitors. What lies behind what was shown to Pereyra? Perhaps we’ll find out someday.

1968: A Nurse Burned by an Alleged UFO (CE-2)

Source: Diario Los AndesDate: 16 August 1968 (Mendoza, Argentina)

1968: A Nurse Burned by an Alleged UFO (CE-2)

New details have emerged regarding the strange case involving Adela Casalvieri de Panassiti, 46, a nurse at the Provincial Neuropsychiatry Hospital, who claims having been paralyzed by a “flying saucer” that landed on one of the facility’s yards in the early morning hours of last Monday.

According to official sources, the SIA (Servicio de Inteligencia de Aeronautica), the Forensic Police and a physicist from the National Atomic Energy Committee have played a role in the strange episode in order to analyze a unique stain found on the pavement “where the UFO landed”. It was leaden in color, and smelled strongly of sulfur.

Mrs. Panassitti was interviewed by a writer for LOS ANDES at her home, and said the following: “The time was 1:30 a.m. on Monday and I was tending to patients. Suddenly, a loud buzzing sound made my ears hurt. Then I saw a powerful glow emanating from the yard. I opened a door, thinking that gas from the heater had made me feel sick, but it was then I noticed, with surprise, that the glow was becoming brighter and that the noise had ended. I ran out to the courtyard in shock, and I felt paralyzed the moment I stepped over the threshold: there was the light, in the middle of the pavement, beside a pimiento tree. The device emitted a red color with intermittent blue. I felt my face burning and covered my face with my hands to avoid burning my eyes (she suffered facial burns). A few moments later, the noise returned and I saw the object rising into the air until it lost itself in the sky, all the while flashing a bright light.”

Mrs. Panassitti says that she was immediately able to overcome the state of paralysis she found herself in, calling the other nurses for help, as these were in a more remote pavilion. “ I didn’t make it to the door, because my legs gave out and I felt to the ground.” The woman explained that the UFO was of normal size (sic) and that “several passengers could fit inside it with ease.”

At the spot where the nurse claims having seen the UFO, there was a small stain (certified by several doctors and employees, as well as scientists) that was leaden grey in color and left a strong smell of sulfur. The phenomenon vanished within days, but even today (as was observed), whenever the courtyard is hosed down, the spot where the odd spot is located dries immediately.

A thoroughly reliable source confided to this journalist that a physicist with the National Atomic Energy Commission and an electronics engineer reported to the hospital with a Geiger counter to see if there was radioactivity or not: indeed there was. The unusual event may only be explained through the investigation being performed by Aeronautics and the police. The report on the findings should be in the government’s hands already.

It was also reported that the nurse underwent several tests and was found completely normal in all of them.

It was also confirmed that the daughters of a government official witnessed a light similar to the one described by Mrs. Panassiti at the same time and in another part of the city.

Friday, July 22, 2011

UFOs: "A Real and Serious Threat"

Source: Diario ImpreDate: 21 July 2011

UFOs Represent “A Real and Serious Threat”By Luis Jaspe

Yet again we come across the subject of UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) and cannot find an explanation for the majority of the cases that suggest the existence – day after day – of something beyond.

We cannot grasp how some authorities endeavor to conceal the subject when increasingly greater numbers of people are interested in really knowing what is going on. However, there are always those who spend their lives deceiving those who are truly interested in the subject, which we consider to be an actual problem.

Fortunately, there are people who have indeed involved themselves in UFO research, such as Chilean captain Rodrigo Bravo, who is also a consultant for “UFO” magazine and who has said on more than one occasion that we are facing a real problem, even though the majority may not believe in subjects of this nature.

Cronicaviva.com.pe published Captain Rodrigo Bravo’s thoughts in this regard: “We can no longer deny or ignore the UFO situation. They represent a real and serious threat. Today we are faced by a complex phenomenon whose characteristics cannot be explained within normal terrestrial circumstances.”

All of this after reporting and advising about series of recordings in which various Chilean pilots have stated having contact with one or more UFOs.

The Comité de Estudios de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos (CEFAA) has these recordings, and they are still under review to determine which [sightings] have an explanation and which do not. It pleases us to have people who will inform us about developments for which we are unable to find any explanation whatsoever. Here you will find a video that – while not new – was published CEFAA in which you can year and see some cases involving sightings by Chilean pilots, as well as the two most recent cases occurred in Mexico and in the United Kingdom.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Farewell to a Researcher: Jorge Anfruns (1944-2011)

Farewell to a Researcher: Jorge Anfruns

Our friend and colleague Quique Mario (CEUFO) has alerted us to the passing of one of Chile’s great UFO researchers, Jorge Anfruns. A publicist, commentator, writer and speaker, Anfruns was better known in the U.S. for his role as the founder and director of MUFON-Chile. His approach to research included not only current reports, but his country’s history, stating that the Chilean natives were aware of interdimensional leaps in time – what we have come to know as the Special Theory of Relativity – and which survive as myths and legends handed down to our times. His books include Ovnis Extraterrestres y Otros en Chile, Extraterrestres en Chile – Top Secret and El Ovni-Arca de Noé.

Mario has posted the following quote by Anfruns: “I have a more terrestrial vision of the UFO matter. I refuse to use the word phenomenon, because if I see an unregistered aircraft flying before me, it’s only a flying machine and not a PHENOMENON. If you have any doubts about this, request the aeronautical regulations of any country and be so kind as to read it. In the language employed by aeronautical schools, the aforementioned word is not employed to define the design or style of airplanes or flying machines.”

Agreeing with the late researcher’s perspective, Mario adds: “I think that this is a solid argument to quit referring to UFOs as a phenomenon, and to banish the word from the field of research – a word that is repeated almost mechanically by those of us wander around looking for an answer. UFOs are “there” and have ceased to be a phenomenon, having become yet another artifact of our society.”

Shedding Light on UFO-Related Blackouts

Shedding Light on UFO-Related BlackoutsBy Scott Corrales

Joaquin V. Gonzalez lost power at two o’clock in the morning on Thursday, November 26, 2009. No, not a disgruntled utility customer, shaking a puny fist at the uncaring energy provider, but an entire population center of twenty thousand souls. Some of these souls were in the town square, trying to beat the heat by eating ice cream outdoors despite the lateness of the hour, sitting at the cafe tables and chairs of establishments catering to this early morning clientele, driven from sweltering houses into the open air. The southern hemisphere’s summer had been warmer than most, and the good people of Joaquin V. Gonzalez were about to have an added surprise with their gelattos.

An elongated, glowing unidentified flying saucer, described as having “intermittent lights like flashers” and an unblinking red light crossed the skies over the community in Northern Argentina, knocking out power as it went past.

Luis Burgos, director of the Fundación Argentina de Ovnilogía (FAO) would later explain that the lights went out in Joaquin V. González exactly when the unknown object flew overhead. Later on, as the object went over the El Tunal power station, it melted one of the plant’s turbine generators, a fact that officials from the EDESA electric company were unable to explain to the media or the authorities. Stories of burned out light posts also abounded. Witnesses to the event, said Burgos, complained of a “sensation of being anesthetized” for a short period of time as the object flew past, and that “the silence was overwhelming” during the sighting. To make matters worse, the intruder also tampered with the phone lines, isolating the town from the rest of the country for twelve hours.

Summer can be the cruelest season when the mercury soars past the hundred degree mark and the nights are almost just as hot. Without an electric fan or air conditioner, sleep can be reduced to an incessant tossing and turning. The Spanish town of Bollullos (Huelva) was certainly a perfect example of this unrelenting heat in the month of July 1975, when what little relief offered by mechanical cooling devices was interrupted by a sudden, unexpected blackout.

The power outage had occurred at eleven o'clock in the evening, prompting locals to look out their windows for a possible explanation. Three local youths had gone to the movie theater in search of some relief from the heat, only to find their enjoyment interrupted by the blackout. With nothing left to do, the dejected trio returned home, only to have a startling encounter with the unexplained.

Francisco Esquivel, Diego Sanchez and Diego Salas suddenly became aware of a strange yellow ball of light at the edge of the road--the only source of light amid the surrounding darkness. It appeared to be hovering above the power lines.

Cautiously, the driver slowed down to allow his vehicle to coast gently past the unknown object. In a newspaper interview with Spanish journalist J.J. Benítez, Francisco, the driver, said that the object's fuselage shone with a metallic sheen, surrounded by an aura of bright white light. He added that he felt the strange presence was "trying to drive them away" by hurling flashes of light in their direction.

This did nothing to allay his curiosity: Francisco got out of his car to take a closer look. Just as he did so, the high voltage lines began producing a shower of sparks. Fear gripped the driver and his friends, and they sped away from the area even as their car's engine began to sputter and die. Running into town in a panic, they told anyone who listened what they had seen: a UFO had been responsible power outage.

A Legendary Blackout

One of the earliest factual cases of UFO interference with the flow of electricity to our residential areas occurred in November 1953, a football-sized UFO stormed down from the heavens over New Haven, Connecticut. The mini-UFO proceeded to smash through a billboard close to a residential area and head skyward after the impact. Lights all over the neighborhood dimmed as the event took place. Tamaroa, Illinois, also had its lights cut by a giant hovering UFO in 1957. Porto Alegre, Brazil, was plunged into darkness on August 30, 1954, and the city of Rome had lost power on August 3, 1958. In 1962, an UFO touched ground at Eureka, Utah, not far from Stead AFB and left a nearby power substation inoperative for 40 minutes until the object took off.

Was it inconceivable for UFOs, with their apparent interest or thirst for electricity, to affect even larger population centers? On November 9, 1965, twenty-nine million residents of the northeastern United States, and millions more in Canada, were plunged into darkness as electricity was affected by a mysterious source. At five thirty p.m. on that fateful day, thousands of terrified New Yorkers were trapped in subway tunnels and within elevators in the heart of skyscrapers. No one was spared the event, not even military bases.

The blackout spread like an ink stain from the Niagara Falls area to the cities of Buffalo, Rochester, Utica and the smaller communities along the Great Lakes in a matter of minutes. Shortly after, it grew to encompass the states of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont. In a country still in the throes of the Cold War, and with the Cuban Missile Crisis a fresh memory, it was first feared that the blackout heralded nuclear armageddon. An airline pilot allegedly exclaimed that the vision of utter blackness on the ground below him made him think it was "the end of the world."

Radio stations, operating on backup power, were able to keep the frightened population calm, although news items in the broadcasts made reference to "trouble up north" without providing any specifics. A private plane instructor north of Syracuse,NY reported seeing a colossal fireball hovering above the quarter-million volt lines of the Niagara Mohawk Station in Clay, NY. Precisely at that time, operators in the New York City area registered a massive onrush of power to the north, perhaps drawn by the "fireball". The blackout occurred minutes later.

Thousands of witnesses in the darkened cities and countryside would later claimed to have seen strange lights crossing the skies with impunity on that fateful evening. Others reported seeing "fireballs" hovering over power transmission cables, changing in color from blue to orange to green.

The official explanation given at the time was a relay break in the massive Sir Adam Beck Plant No.2, located a few miles to the north of Niagara Falls. According to experts, the break allegedly overloaded the U.S. lines and the load detectors failed to perform according to design -- a fact which was never satisfactorily explained.

The entire Northeastern U.S., plunged into darkness, commanded global attention. Not so the equally mysterious blackouts that followed: New Mexico, Texas and Mexico itself suffered unexplained power losses in later weeks: On December 3rd, Ciudad Juárez in Mexico and the major cities of the American Southwest were left in shadow as Socorro, NM (a UFO mecca), Holloman AFB, White Sands Missile Range and other sensitive installations were rendered inoperative. Blame was placed on a pair of defective units somewhere in New Mexico--however, local witnesses claimed to have seen a glowing object over the power station.

In 1979, author Yurko Bondarchuk accused Canadian prime minister Lester Pearson of covering up the UFO aspect of the Great 1965 Blackout. Bondarchuk cites the explanation offered by Dr. James McDonald that the explanation given about a broken relay as the cause of the power outage was a cover. The prime minister, suggests the author, must have believed that disclosing the real source of the blackout was unwise."UFOs," writes Bondarchuk, "create sudden power surges in transmission lines as the craft flies overhead...in theory, these power surges could produce blackouts of massive proportions." (National Post, 2003)

Mexico: Harbinger of Blackouts to Come

The age of the great UFO-induced blackouts continued throughout those troubled years. A harbinger, perhaps, of would happen later on across the northeastern U.S., were the three separate power failures of September 23, 1965 in the Mexican city of Cuernavaca -- fifty miles away from Mexico City.

The Ultima Hora newspaper indicated that the blackout had been caused by a large luminous flying saucer which crossed the heavens over the city--an inverted soup-bowl device which was seen not only by thousands of citizens but by city mayor Emilio Riva Palacios, who was attending the opening of a film festival with members of his cabinet. The lights went out during the showing, and upon going outside, the city fathers were treated to the sight of the massive object's glow, which reportedly filled the entirety of Cuernavaca valley.

But the force behind all these aerial phenomena appeared to be take a shine to Mexico City itself, with its juxtaposition of massive colonial structures, modern skyscrapers and ancient ruins: it chose the 16th of September, the one hundred fifty-fifth anniversary of Mexico's independence from Spain, to manifest half a dozen luminous objects over the city's skies, casting downtown Mexico City into unbreakable gridlock as drivers left their vehicles to take a better look at the phenomenon. Newspapers reported that aviation authorities had received in excess of five thousand telephone calls from people asking if they had also seen "flying saucers". On September 25, a citizenry weary of craning their necks skyward endured another leisurely display of the unknown as a vast luminous body passed overhead, remaining motionless for a while before shooting out of sight at a terrific speed. Only days later, two smaller objects would buzz the gilded dome of Mexico's Palacio de Bellas Artes, a turn of the century structure that dominates La Alameda park. The early evening sighting was witnessed by a few dozen people waiting at a bus stop; they described the objects as "enormous luminous bodies with intermittent sparkling lights."

By this point in time, some of the world's major newspapers had picked up on Mexico's saucer situation. Paris's Le Figaro reprinted an editorial from Italy's Corriere della Sera on the subject: "Mexico City International Airport has officially recorded, of late, some three thousand cases of mysterious apparitions described in detail. At nightfall, people gather on the terraces and balconies of their homes to search the skies...a clamor of voices can occasionally be heard, saying: "There goes one! Can you see it?" Invariably, what follows is this: traffic is paralyzed on neighboring streets, since drivers also want to partake of the spectacle. The roadways grind to a halt, leading to monstrous traffic jams. After a while, witnesses to tho the event are willing to swear that the presence of platillos voladores causes engines to stall and plunges homes into darkness. Throughout Mexico, the number of blackouts has been inexplicably high..."

Alone in the Dark

Respected Argentinean author Roberto Banchs mentions the July 4, 1968 blackout that darkened the entire sector of Tigre (province of Buenos Aires). During this incident, a number of witnesses reported seeing a UFO. A woman named Isabel Gómez stated that the object "seemed to emit light. It was the only lighted object at the time." A few months later, the city of Chascomús was plunged into darkness. Mrs. Blanca Davis witnessed a UFO measuring some 7 or 8 meters in diameter hanging motionless in the air, directly above the town square. "When we looked toward the west," she reported, "we saw two [more] discs and another one which gave the impression of being ready to land. Suddenly the UFOs headed toward the lagoon area, from which twenty more objects appeared, flying from north to south at fantastic speeds." Banchs reports that electricity was restored the moment the objects disappeared.

The 1968 wave of UFO sightings, which extended from the Dominican Republic to the island of Puerto Rico, also caused a series of blackouts. On August 11 that year, police officers in the town of Yauco on the island's southern coast were startled to see "a brilliant moon-shaped object which lit up the area completely. The following day, a similar object was seen in the neighboring Dominican Republic by residents of Puerto Plata and Sosúa. According to researcher Sebastián Robiou, the minute that the locals saw the phenomenon approach, they would hurry up to find "candles and flashlights, since electricity always failed whenever the objects flew over their homes."

UFOs and blackouts plagued Argentina again in January 2001, when the La Voz del Interior newspaper ran a story about the harrowing experience suffered by a local motorist named Julio Salguero. At 3:30 a.m. on New Year's Day, Salguero was on his way home in the town of Corralito, cutting across the community of Rio Tercero to save some time.

"We were calmly driving along," said the driver, "when suddenly my wife screamed: "Be careful!" and we saw a light heading straight for us. I hit the brakes. What I could see was a round, very powerful light, like a welding light, over a meter in diameter. It seemed to be heading straight for the car, but it suddenly stopped and backed off. It remained at the hight of the power cables that are now at the side of the road, moving up and down," he explained. "The light lit everything up for a few minutes, without any exaggerations, as if it were broad daylight, due to its intensity. It then rose some 30 meters into the air and suddenly vanished. Neither I nor my family can state which way it went, because we'd be lying. What we saw is that it vanished suddenly, like a light being switched off."

Salguero and his family were startled to hear that the strange object they had seen over the high-voltage lines had deprived the town of Corralito of electricity on a night without storms or high winds, and even more so when they discovered that nearby Rio Tercero had lost power at exactly the same time they had their experience. "As far as I know, no reason for the power outage has been found," he said.

Argentina has not been the only South American nation bedeviled by blackout-causing UFOs: in the Summer 1998 issue of the Samizdat newsletter, Brazilian researcher Oriel Farías told the world about the incredible and still little-known UFO wave that covered northeastern Brazil and which centered on the town of Guarabira. According to Farías, the outstanding characteristic of the '98 flap was the sheer variety of objects reported, ranging from standard disk-shaped craft to massive objects projecting powerful beams of light. "Lengths of 30 meters have been reported, the size of a 20-storey building," he writes.

The Guarabira "invasion" began on March 3, 1998 and was spearheaded by 26 UFOs flying over the city at 6:45 p.m., when the lights went out in Guarabira, and lasting until 3:45 a.m., when power returned to the city. This blackout remains unexplained to this day.

Lights Out in Puerto Rico

UFO and paranormal activity ran almost non-stop throughout the 1990s after a decade of inactivity. Earlier saucer flaps had created their fair share of electromagnetic interference with automobiles and aircraft, and even some widespread power outages

In September 1977, residents of the Colobó sector of Loiza, P.R., were treated to the sight of a UFO flying low over the local beach at around 8:30 p.m.. The object, according to Sebastian Robiou, made an occasional buzzing sound and then "shut off and disappeared". When interviewed, the same residents noted that the lights browned-out in the sector while the UFO was in evidence.

Fifteen years later, residents of the Mayagüez Terrace development ran out of their homes in response to the shouts of students from the nearby university, who were reacting to the sight of a spherical UFO crossing the skies in the general direction of Cerro Las Mesas. The orange-hued sphere materialized after having apparently been the cause of a blackout which affected a considerable part of the city for a few minutes.

Puerto Rico can also boast the distinction of being the only place in the world where a blackout was deliberately caused by the authorities to disprove the presence of the UFO phenomenon in the island's UFO-ridden southwestern corner. Since 1987, reports had pointed to UFO activity in the vicinity of a shallow lagoon known as Laguna Cartagena: all manner of solid craft and intriguing "lights in the sky" had been seen in the area, and in some cases, emerging from and vanishing into the water, leading many to believe that an "alien base" must exist underground in the Lajas Valley.

On October 2, 1991, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) left hundreds of homes without electricity for thirty minutes. Ramón Montalvo, an engineer at the PREPA plant in San Germán, claimed that the unusual lights vanished from the darkened sky "the minute the power was cut off." Lt. Rafael Rodríguez of the Lajas police argued that the blackout proved the lights believed to be UFOs were merely the reflections on the lagoon's surface.

The authorities went to the extreme of placing a series of large reflectors on the crest of nearby Mt. Candelaria. The experiment failed miserably -- no such reflection was seen, despite official claims. Any individual armed with a map would have noticed that the lights on Candelaria, twenty miles away, could not possibly account for the situation being experienced on an almost daily basis by the residents of the Lajas Valley.

In mid-March 1992, residents of the Puerto Rican city of Trujillo Alto were roused from their sleep by an unearthly noise and a spectacular display of blue light. The light changed to other colors of the spectrum in rapid succession as two powerful searchlights scanned the darkened surface from above. Hundreds, if not thousands, of residents were able to see a massive UFO hovering directly over a local power substation. The airborne goliath began drawing electricity from the substation in a stunning visual display that filled onlookers with awe.

Equally awed were the technicians from the local power utility, who reported early the next day to repair the burned out substation: according to estimates, the UFO had caused well over a $250,000 in damages that could not be readily explained, such as the molten transformer terminals and the inoperative automatic breakers which should have prevented such a tremendous loss of current.

They Said It Couldn't Happen Again

Computer screens suddenly went black as the hum of 21st century civilization suddenly stopped to be replaced by an unaccustomed silence. The time was 4:11 p.m. on August 14, 2003.

In a matter of minutes, battery-powered radios would report that a widespread blackout had plunged New York city into darkness for the third time in forty years, and at precisely the worst time of day, as tens of thousands of office workers were getting ready to return home on one of the hottest days of an otherwise unremarkable summer. The problem affected not only the Big Apple, but a wide swath of territory stretching westward: Toronto, Lansing, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Rochester...the litany of affected cities included major urban concentrations and minor villages. Politicians rushed to occupy their places before the cameras to assure the population that the blackout of 2003 was not an act of terrorism and that power would be restored soon.

The blame game started almost immediately, with New Yorkers blaming Canadians, and placing the blame on a "lightning bolt" which had allegedly struck a power stations. The blame then shifted to an alleged fire at a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, and so forth. The Great Northeast Blackout of 2003 had affected fifty million people and as of this writing, no official explanation has been put forward.

Is it perhaps naive to ascribe this blackout to the UFO phenomenon, especially as no reliable reports have come in? According to the National UFO Reporting Center, New York state alone reported 703 sightings since the beginning of 2003 (with heavy activity in June and July) so something unusual could conceivably happened. Forty-eight hours after the blackout, it was suggested that a strange "power inversion" along the Lake Erie Loop had caused the blackout, but no explanation had been put forth as to the external force capable of causing the phenomenon. The fact remained that "a huge field of electricity dropped out and drained north," in the words of an Associated Press teletype. Could this have been one of the UFO-induced "massive surges in power" that Yurko Bondarchuk mentioned in his book?

As far as the cause is concerned, it seems as though we will remain in the dark for a long, long time.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Ancient Chroniclers of Mystery

Javier Resines’s article on the Spanish kraken that terrorized the vicinity of Cadiz during the Roman Era prompted recollections of readings about “antiquarians” from the ancient world, who laboriously jotted down all of the “prodigia” and oddities of their times. Readers of UFO tracts are familiar with Julius Obsequens, who took special note of flying shields and other heavenly displays – pastimes indulged by other ancient historians like Livy and Dio Cassius – and the medieval St. Gregory of Tours, whose annotations of every comet, meteor and unknown object overhead are readily available in the excellent Penguin Books edition of his “A History of the Franks”.

Some two thousand years ago, the Roman historian Pausanias had the opportunity to witness an unusual sight: the carcass of what was described as "a Triton" --one of the sea-god Neptune's helpers--allegedly slain after having come ashore to kill the cattle of the inhabitants of the Greek city of Tanagra. Pausanias reported the the creature had "hard, dense scales and stank."

Most of the observations made by these chroniclers of the unusual have been explained by science, but reading their original works remains fascinating stuff. We could conceivably include Aulus Gellius among the earliest cryptozoologists (or a pre-Fort fortean, perhaps?) Here is the translation of his Attic Nights by the Reverend W. Beloe, published in London in 1795:

Story from Tubero of a serpent of unusual size.

Tubero has written in his history that in the first Punic War, Attilius Regulus, the consul, being encamped in Africa near the river Bagrada, had a great and sever engagement with a single serpent of extraordinary fierceness, whose den was on that spot. That he sustained the attack of the whole army, and was a long time opposed with the ballistae and catapultae; and that being killed, his skin, which was one hundred and twenty feet long, was sent to Rome.

No less interesting is the translator’s commentary (which did not appear in the Spanish version of the account I read so long ago) to Gellius’s report. “That there are enormous serpents in Africa will admit of no doubt, but I believe still larger are met with in the interior parts of India. I have somewhere read of travellers mistaking them, by their extraordinary magnitude, and when asleep, for the trunks of trees. It is asserted in the Philosophical Transactions that in the Kingdom of Congo, serpents have been found twenty-five feet in length, which will swallow a sheep whole. Travellers also relate that in the Brazils, serpents have been found forty feet long [...] Dr. Shaw mentions it in his travels, and thinks it was a crocodile. But whoever has heard of a crocodile one hundred and twenty feet long? Mr. Daines Barrington disbelieves it altogether, calling it an absurd, incredible circumstance, to which opinion many will without reluctance accede.” As becomes immediately evident by that final sentence, skeptics were alive and well in the 18th century.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Spain: An Extraterrestrial Highway in the Sierra de Madrid

An unusual initiative is taking place in the Sierra de Madrid: a replica Nevada’s “Extraterrestrial Highway” is being created as a homage to the opening of the motion picture “Paul” – the adventures of a rogue extraterrestrial on the run from the U.S government, aided and abetted by two saucer buffs. Bearing the name “Ruta Extraterrestre Area Norte”, this undertaking has not been found at all unusual by some – journalist David Benito among them.

According to this reporter, this mountainous area north of the Spanish capital boasts a proud UFO history of its own. He cites UFO and alien reports over the Pedrezuela and El Atazar reservoirs in the mid-‘70s, documented by researcher Manuel Salazar. One particular case involves a pharmacist from the town of Lozoyuela: a tall, odd-looking character with a foreign accent entered the drug store looking for “a syrup that would allow him to dive into the reservoir. According to Salazar, the strange being returned the following year with an identical companion, and made a similar request for a “diving syrup” (echoes of the “oxy-gum” from the old anime series Marine Boy?)

November 1978, however, marked the start of UFO activity in this area, with allegations of an underwater UFO base at the Pedrezuela Reservoir. A local broadcaster – Radio Intercontinental – organized an event to trawl the bottom of the reservoir, attracting thousands of onlookers. Nothing was found, according to David Benito, but strange phenomena plagued the event. “Compass needles went crazy,” he says.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Argentina: Residents of Rafaela Photograph UFO

Source: La Capital Date: July 13, 2011

Argentina: Residents of Rafaela Take UFO Photo With Cellphone

They were recording a child dancing when a strange object appeared in the sky. When they noticed the object's presence, the young women began shouting. "It's a flying saucer" according to a local resident. They claim nothing like this had ever happened to them before.

Two women in the north end of Rafaela claim having recorded a strange object toward the sun exactly as they were recording the youngest brother of one of the women as he danced around.

"I was very scared," said one of the girls to a local news station, and her words subsequently appeared in Rafaela's Diario Uno. A strange object is visible in the video, which appears behind the figure of the dancing boy.

The girls began to shout as soon as they noticed the object. A neighbor said: "it's a flying saucer."

One of the young women stated that she has taken photos in the same way and pointing in the same direction, but that nothing similar had ever happened before. "I believe in these things, but I don't know."

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Non-UFO: Antarctic Wave Blasts Southern Hemisphere

While some parts of the U.S. bake in some of the hottest temperatures ever recorded, the Southern Hemisphere is facing a savage winter. Contributing editor Guillermo Gimenez writes: "After many days of much cold and rain along the Argentinean Atlantic coast, it has finally snowed in various cities of Buenos Aires province, and Necochea, of course, is no exception, with temperatures of -6 degrees. Snow fell all over this coastal region. I witnessed the snowfall between 0100 and 0230 hours. The phenomenon was repeated later on. The polar wave has reached all of South America." Other reports indicate extreme cold and even snow in parts of southern Brazil.

Mexico: Chupacabras? A Report from Parras, Coahuila

According to the Diario Vanguardia newspaper, a mysterious animal slaughter took place at Rancho Buena Fe, east of Parras, Coahuila.

The property's owner said that her animals turned up either dead or dying, all of them displaying puncture marks on their necks. A total of eight sheep, seven mature goats and a young goat were found dead.

According to her statement, she heard no sounds whatsoever. Her guard dogs never barked, and the intruder's prints were never found. She added that the same thing happened the previous month and that motivated a change of pens. She placed the animals closer to her home, but even that did not prevent the loss of her animals.

It should be noted that in Sabinas, another locality in the state of Coahuila, the presence of wildlife has been reported in collective farming properties and in the outskirts of the city. Black bears and pumas have been mentioned. However, bears and pumas do not kill their prey by puncturing their necks. Therefore, in my opinion, what happened in Rancho Buena Fe, Parras, has still not been satisfactorily explained.

About Me

The Institute of Hispanic Ufology was established in October of 1998 with the appearance of the first issue of Inexplicata. The organization currently has representatives and contributing editors in over a dozen Spanish-speaking countries. Director: Scott Corrales.